[1]. It would be rather amusing, if it were not a melancholy sign of human perverseness, to sum up all the hypotheses which have been at their first promulgation pronounced impious and heretical. The denial of the approaching End of the World in any century after Christ; the Copernican System; Inoculation and Vaccination for the Small-pox; the change of the Style of the year; Pecuniary Usufruct; Geology; Phrenology; Railways; Aërostation; the Census; Mesmerism, &c. &c., would be included in the list of either existing or defunct heresies.
[2]. We shall endeavour to speak of Mind in popular phraseology, instead of in the obscure terms in which metaphysicians envelope their ignorance of mental phenomena.
[3]. See Combe’s Phrenology; passim.
[4]. See the woodcut (after a gem in the Florentine Museum) on the Title-page.
[5]. The Platonic theory that beauty of form generally indicates beauty of mind, is finely condensed by Spenser into a single line:
“All that is good is beautiful and fair.”
A HYMN OF HEAVENLY BEAUTY.
And again
“All that fair is, is by nature good;
That is a sign to know the gentle blood.”—IBID.